Zulu

The Zulu are the largest ethnic group in South Africa, comprising 11 million of the people. A group of Bantus who were a warlike tribe in the 1800s, the Zulu were known for their fighting capabilities, shown by the ruler Shaka in the 1820s. However, they were eventually conquered by the British in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

History
Zulus were Bantu (black African) peoples who were hunter-gatherers and tribesmen who chose the village of Ulundi as their capital. The Zulu tribe was a warmongering race of men, training their boys in a Spartan-style atmosphere in which they would grow into warriors that would fight in warfare with the neighboring Bantu tribes. Their power was first demonstrated by Shaka, who was their chief from 1816 until 1828, in a series of wars in which he extended the Zulu Empire to its height in South Africa. He was assassinated in 1828, but his power was shown by later chiefs such as Dingaan and Cetshwayo.

However, Zulus were no match for the European foreigners that came in the 1830s. The Dutch Voortrekkers who explored South Africa were their first outside opponents, and in the 1837 Battle of Blood River, they were defeated by breach-loading rifles while their customary weapons were the short spear and shield. Although they lost the Cape of Good Hope to whites, they had no further challenges until the arrival of a new and more dangerous power: the British.

In the 1870s they established commerce with Britain, but Britain used a flimsy excuse based on a border dispute to demand that the Zulu chief Cetshwayo disband his army, knowing full well that he would not. When Cetshwayo duly refused, the British invaded Zululand and were annihilated at the Battle of Isandhlwana in 1879. A British response to the Zulu victory was bloody: at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, the Zulus were held off by a handful (38) of British troops armed with rifles. Eventually, more British troops arrived in South Africa and on July 4, the British captured Ulundi. Cetshwayo was imprisoned and later headed to Britain, where he was treated respectfully, but in 1886 he was assassinated in a tribal dispute back home.

The Zulu tribe eventually settled down under the rule of the Boer Republics and later the British-led Union of South Africa, but in the 1900s they suffered racial attacks. The Dutch Afrikaaners controlled the government, and they had unequal rights. They had no suffrage and were forced to live in dirty huts; in the later 1900s they had no electricity or plumbing like the whites. The Umkhonto wa Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) reebels fought for their rights in the 1980s against the racist Apartheid laws, which were repealed in 1996 and Nelson Mandela, a member of the Bantu race, became the first black President of South Africa.

Currently, there are 11 million Zulus (79% of the population), and they hold equal rights with Afrikaners.